


Known and unknown

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BoB Era, But stolen century references, F/M, Having a crush on your boss, M/M, Who used to be your girlfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 09:30:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14234331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Magnus doesn't know much about his boss. He wants to know more. (He knows everything, but he doesn't know that yet.)





	Known and unknown

**Author's Note:**

> Right up front, this has _lots_ of references to my other fic. In particular, I directly reference, in order:
> 
> [Supercut (of us)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11446497)  
> [A loan and a gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798216)  
> [Late night, wrong turn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10796730)   
> [Private Time, Interrupted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11374905) (rated E, also VERY ANGSTY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)   
> [Some people always cry at weddings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562366)
> 
> More obliquely, this uses some themes out of [the only life you could save](https://archiveofourown.org/series/910215).

He can count the things he knows about his boss on one hand. 

  * She likes domes. And the color blue.
  * She has a wicked sly sense of humor. 
  * She can turn serious as death at the drop of a hat. 



* * *

The solstice festival comes, and he learns two more things about her: she recovers fast from a shock, and she can hit  _ hard _ .

He learns something else too, something that shouldn't surprise him but does. He  _ likes _ that gleam in her eye. The way she says “booyah” after slapping him? It's not anything like Jules (he compares every woman to Julia, whether he wants to or not), but it's…. Intriguing. 

Dancing, later, he puts that aside. Maybe it's time he moves on, but maybe with someone else. An arm around his, a kiss on the cheek, someone to dance with, these things he might be ready for, and they’re offered freely.

* * *

She won't accept a hug, but she will take in a kid? She comes to trainings and she doesn’t say anything, but he can feel her there. Watching.

* * *

Now he knows her name: Lucretia, but not why she doesn't want anyone to call her that, or why Lucas does anyway. Well, Lucas is just a dick, so that's not really a surprise. But why does Lucas know her name when no one else seems to? Why does Lucas have the frequency of a stone of farspeech none of them have ever seen?

He holds onto the pendant longer than he probably should, hoping it holds some clue about who she is, why she does what she does. There’s no messages stored, no frequencies saved.

He wonders if there was someone else who would have given her a backrub. She turned him down, called a backrub from him “the nightmare scenario”, which somehow makes him more determined that she needs a backrub.

Somehow she manages to be polite and distant even while getting a backrub.

* * *

She likes pancakes. For some reason, she’s very emotional about them. And when he mentions Julia, she looks wounded, like she knows, even though he’s never talked about Jules. It’s not in any of his paperwork. For the first time, he wonders what she knows about him, and how.

And she’s high. She’s giggling and maudlin and high and it’s like seeing an entirely different person sprawled out on the common room couch, her shoes kicked off, her bare ankles crossed.

She’s utterly undignified scarfing down pancakes, and he wants to make her food and rub her feet and hear her say silly things in that dignified voice. He looks away, looks at Merle. Anywhere but at her.

When he’s alone, Merle walking her home, Taako still out on the quad somewhere, he wishes she were there with him.

* * *

According to Merle, she can’t be flirted with. “Like Fantasy Teflon,” he says, after he comes back from their spa weekend. Carey laughs like she knows something, but she’s not telling.

He tries not to blush, but catches Taako out of the corner of his eye, just watching, not saying anything. A look of maybe judgemental curiosity? Something about the raised eyebrow reminds him of her.

Taako’s tone is acid when he finally says: “I’m counting on you chucklefucks to not get us fired.” (Later: “Am I not enough for you, Burnsides?”)

He goes back to punching the training dummy.

* * *

After the Chalice, his insomnia comes back. It’s too much, not just closing the door on Julia forever, but what he knows, what he can’t understand but knows but doesn’t know. (What does she know? Does she know what his mind can’t shape into words?)

He does like he always does: he goes for late night runs. (Always? What about — but the thought skitters sideways across his uneasy mind.) He runs until the anxiety and the dread and the memories and the  _ lack _ of memories and the nervous energy drain out of him in total exhaustion. He sleeps a few hours — if he’s lucky, without dreaming; if he isn’t, he wakes screaming, smelling smoke and death.

The training is grueling and somehow that's good. But she's distant again, hard and dignified, watching them train with unspoken judgment in her eyes. It strikes him again that she's beautiful and that she must be lonely. He's closer to Taako and Merle than he's been to anyone in a long time, but he's lonely too. 

So even after training, late night runs when everyone else is asleep. Everyone but Taako, away with someone else. (That’s fine, maybe. Maybe it’s better that way.) Everyone but Merle, out watching the stars. 

Everyone but her, making pottery in solitude. 

* * *

He knows these things:

  * She makes beautiful vases. 
  * She wants him the way he wants her. 
  * She speaks in static. 



* * *

He goes to the voidfish, looking for answers, but leaves with more questions. And this: EGG BABE. (Lucretia what have you done?) 

He goes to Pringles and leaves with two guards in the pocket workshop. He leaves her a note she'll never get to read. (Lucretia we have to talk.) 

He goes to Wonderland and leaves a mannequin. Leaves alive because Taako grabbed hold of his soul and Merle pulled them both back. Answers jangle the edges of his mind. But he'd rather have his body — the arms that held his wife — than the truth. 

And the truth? The truth is all at once overwhelming with a hundred years of this and this and this and  _ this is who I am _ and  _ why, Luce, why _ .

* * *

He knows everything about her, except:

  * How she became the woman on the dais.
  * How she found them again.
  * How she kept from being crushed by her loneliness.



* * *

He hugs her without reservation — regardless what Taako thinks — because he knows her, he knows he loves her. He knows she loves him, even through lies and static.

And then everyone knows.

And then they’re fighting to save everything again, together, again, all of them together.

And then….

Light.

* * *

What happens after you save the universe? He helped save a town, once, and he thought he knew what was supposed to happen after that. Didn’t go that way. (He still wears their wedding rings on a chain around his neck; he’ll wear them until the day he dies.)

He spent a hundred years running, before that, and now he remembers what they said they’d do when they stopped. They can’t do that either. Too many bonds were broken.

He builds, because knows how to do that now. He rebuilds a town; he builds a home, with a kitchen and a library; he builds a kitchen in a home where he’s welcome as a guest.

He’s welcome in the life that Taako rebuilds, welcome with Lup and Barry and Kravitz. (Even Kravitz. Sometimes death is kind and generous.) They all go to the shore together, Merle’s house back on the beach with his kids,  _ all _ his kids. 

He’s the best man at a wedding, his best friend’s wedding, and she sticks her tongue at him, calls him “spaceman” and teases him about his crush on their boss. And he blushes. Carey pushes two glasses of champagne into his hands and pushes him to where she’s standing on the balcony alone.

(She’s talking to Angus and there are tears in both their eyes. Another thing he didn’t know. Another piece of his life to build.)

She says she’s sorry, again, and that’s something he’s known before he knew anything else, he doesn’t need to know it anymore, doesn’t need her to be sorry.

He asks her to dance, for old time’s sake, for new times yet to come, and she says yes. And what he knows about her is more than all the twinkling stars in the sky, and what he doesn’t know yet, he has time enough to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to @bluecoloreddreams who is also writing a BoB-Magnus-has-a-crush-on-Lucretia fic. (It's going to be amazing, y'all.) WDA two cakes forever.


End file.
